A special session bringing together university students and professors from across the Country with industry professionals is being planned for PaperWeek/BIOFOR. The objective will be to facilitate a forum to discuss industry needs and the research being done at the university level.

Student Competition - Innovation in the Canadian Forest Sector

The objective of the competition is to connect students and the main innovation players of the paper industry (industry representatives, universities, college technology transfer centers, government research centers, etc.) in order to propose solutions to a given industrial problem. In order to do this, participants will be divided into different roundtables: one per participating company. Each of these tables will be composed of a moderator and a representative from each category of actors in order to have the maximum diversity and creativity in each team. At the end of the activity, each team will present their proposed solution to the industrial problem and a jury will designate the winning team.

At the beginning of the day, participants will be assigned to their table and the activity launched by a presentation of the industrial problem followed by an explanation of the instructions and the flow of the day.

The day will run through several steps that moderators will follow closely in order to guide the participants of each team towards the final result. This will enable the fair mentoring of all the teams and to focus collective energies towards the most probable and effective solution to be presented to the jury. These roundtables’ activity will last half a day at the end of which a representative of each team will present the solution to the industrial problem to a jury that will award the winning project.

The end purpose of this activity is to enable each participating company to establish links with the students and institutions to which they are affiliated.